The Transitive Property of Attraction
by Concupiscence66
Summary: This is actually based on the short film starring Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt called "Sweet". If you haven't seen it, it's on youtube and you must see it! The following story contains slash, gay sex, dubious consent (drinking and manipulation), mild violence and buckets of angst
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Transitive Property of Attraction

Author: concupiscence66

Fandom: Sweet

Pairing: Pete Sweet/Stitch, Stitch/OMC

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: explicit sex, dub-con (intoxicated, manipulated), angst, substance abuse/drug use, language, violence

Summary: Henry's name is not Stitch, and he did not name his kiosk Sweet Music after Pete Sweet. Pete Sweet named himself after Henry's kiosk.

Henry Dulcy is just a regular guy who'd like to go on the occasional date and occasionally feel good about himself. Somehow, this desire has led to him having a completely useless friend and sidekick. He can handle the dancing and the matching shirts, but when Pete starts dating an imaginary girl (not even one he imagined up himself), Henry begins to question some of his decisions.

Henry wants a real life. And a real life boyfriend.

Author's note: Yes, I wrote a 21,000 word fanfic for a ten minute short. Thanks so much to Bluestocking79 for the beta and endless support and encouragement. Let me extend that comment about support and encouragement to everyone who reads and encourages my insanity!

I'm writing this before I see the artwork by karneol_vision, but I feel safe it saying it will be genius!

xxx

Henry Dulcy needed someone to help out at the kiosk. That night. He wasn't as picky in his interviewing process as he should have been.

"My name is Pete. Pete Sweet!" the boy announced with excitement.

"It says Pete McDougall on your paperwork."

"Yeah, that's my name, but everyone calls me Pete Sweet," the boy explained. Henry wondered if the paperwork was even real. Pete was meant to be twenty-two, but he looked and acted like a teenager.

"That parka is well cool," Pete observed, pulling at the oversized coat Henry had inherited from a former lover named Charles. It was a green monstrosity with a fur-lined hood, but it was warm.

Pete had no experience and the vacant eyes of a mental patient, but he was charming and enthusiastic. He was also fit and had piercing eyes that moved from blue to green or maybe gray, depending on how he tilted his face. He would bring the girls in, and probably a few boys. He didn't seem bright enough to steal.

"Can you start tonight?" Henry asked, wondering if he was making a terrible mistake.

"Wot?" Pete barked in astonishment. "Me first job!"

Pete danced as Henry tried to teach him how to use the register. It all felt like a huge mistake, but Henry was going on his first date since Charles had decided to go back to girls. He needed someone to watch the kiosk.

xxx

"So I was thinkin' this could be my dance," Pete announced, before beginning to flail his arms around wildly.

"Hilarious," Henry snarled. "If I laugh any harder, I'll get a stitch in my side."

Pete never stopped talking, and it was always bollocks.

"A wot?" Pete asked, as though he'd never heard something so ludicrous.

"A stitch."

Pete's face remained blank.

"A stitch in my side—you must be familiar with this expression," Henry snapped.

Pete looked hurt for a moment before his face suddenly brightened.

"You're a stitch," Pete said in a teasing tone, moving in far too close for Henry's comfort.

"That makes no sense at all," Henry sighed.

"_You_ make no sense at all," Pete replied, "and you're a stitch. Stitch."

"Don't call me a stitch," Henry said. "It's childish."

"All right," Pete said with a dazzling smile. "Stitch."

xxx

"All right, Stitch?" Dave said with a smile.

"Don't call me Stitch. My name is Henry."

"But you like to be called Stitch."

"No, I like to be called Henry. That lunatic I hired at the kiosk calls me Stitch. Because he's a lunatic," Henry explained as patiently as he could.

"Remember when I used to work with you?" Dave mused. "Those were good days. Why did I stop working there?"

"You kept getting high and either abandoning the kiosk or just giving things away, so I fired you."

Dave laughed, clearly fondly remembering the good old days. "That's right! I was a mess back then. You know who is dead responsible? My sister Poppy. You should hire her."

"That would be your imaginary sister?" Henry asked, his patience wearing thin. He'd known Dave since primary school and couldn't quite steel his heart to the drug-addled eccentric. They had too much history. When people asked if he'd ever 'tried girls', Stitch included Poppy in the list of his heterosexual adventures. Giving Poppy a feel-up under the influence of psychedelics had certainly been more sexually informative than the year at university he'd spent dating a lesbian. They had both been deeply in the closet, not quite ready to admit the truth even to themselves. For a year, their parents were happy, while Henry learned a surprising amount about football and large dogs.

"That's right," Dave sighed. "I forget sometimes, you know? She's such an important part of my life."

Poppy was an important part of the lives of all Dave's friends. It wasn't everyone who had an imaginary person as part of their social circle. It was a great icebreaker at parties. He'd mentioned Poppy to Pete, in a desperate effort to stop the boy from talking more about New Wave. Pete's eyes had widened with fascination. He was as barmy as Dave, even when he was dead sober, and he couldn't handle liquor at all. One lager, and he was stumbling. He would take a cigarette when offered, but would inevitably cough until tears were rolling down his cheeks while insisting it was "smooth." Henry shuddered to imagine the boy on drugs. His pet theory was that Pete's mother had done tons and tons of drugs while pregnant, resulting in a son who wanted to be introduced to someone's imaginary sister.

Pete was entirely too interested in Poppy. He was a lunatic, but he was endearing, and Henry worried about him in spite of himself. When he asked Pete what kind of girls he liked, he'd said he liked them tall, thin and brunette. Henry had then said Poppy was short, stocky, and ginger, just to keep Pete from getting obsessed.

It hadn't worked.

Talking to Dave could be a chore, but he did always have some amazing drugs on hand. Once Henry got the conversation steered away from Poppy and on to poppers, the night took a turn for the better.

xxx

Henry was lying on the ground outside the club with his feet on the wall, waiting to once again have control over his limbs. They'd gone a bit rogue on him inside the club. He was never a good dancer, but he didn't normally hit himself in the face with his own fist. There was part of his brain that thought that if he laid off the poppers, he'd be more likely to be able to stand up, but that was the boring part of his brain. Another sniff, and he wondered why he'd ever wanted to get off the ground in the first place. He had such a good view of where the stars would be if there wasn't so much light pollution.

"All right, Stitch?"

Henry jumped a foot, not easy or advisable when lying on your back.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Henry barked, clutching at his spasming spine.

"I was walking by and saw you out here having a little lie down," Pete explained, as terminally sunshiny as ever. "I just wanted to say hi. Make sure you didn't need to go to hospital."

There was a halo of light around Pete's head, and his eyes were blindingly blue. He looked like an angel. It might have been the poppers, but Henry suddenly thought that Pete was a divine gift. He'd been sent to help Henry with something. It couldn't be the kiosk, because Pete was rubbish at working, so there had to be another reason their paths had crossed.

When Henry reached out to touch Pete's shining face, the boy suddenly went shy, but didn't pull away. He just sat still and let Henry stroke his lovely, boney face. He wasn't traditionally attractive—his face was all strange angles and weird pointy bits—but it all came together to make a truly lovely visage.

"I'm fine," Henry said, not sounding terribly convincing to himself. "I've just been doing poppers for... hours. I think. I have no idea what time it is."

"Oh, poppers. Yeah," Pete said, clearly having no idea of what he spoke. "They'll make you feel like that."

Henry pulled the bottle out of his pocket. "Just take a quick sniff of the fumes."

Pete obliged. When security kicked them out of the alley because they were apparently a fire hazard, they leaned on each other as they staggered through the streets of London, trying to remember where either of them lived. Henry was pretty sure one hit of poppers shouldn't have affected Pete so strongly, but then, Pete was obviously brain damaged to begin with. Damaged and lovely and just the right height to lean on when too pissed and high to walk straight.


	2. Chapter 2

Pete wanted to be Henry's friend. He wanted them to spend time together outside of work. Henry knew this because Pete kept saying things like, "We should be mates," or "We should do something together after work." While he had gown increasingly fond of Pete, Henry was hesitant to get more entangled with the strange boy. Henry's life wasn't exactly working out the way he'd planned. He was already too old to be working in a kiosk, but his writing career wasn't really going anywhere, and he didn't have a "backup plan" like his parents had suggested when he got his degree in English and Creative Writing. His love life was nearly nonexistent. He wasn't a good enough dancer to go to a gay club, and he didn't really know how else to meet people. It had been a good thing in his youth that no one ever thought he was gay—especially since he couldn't fight for shit—but it made dating hard as an adult. It didn't help that he still tended to feed people's perception that he was heterosexual, as a defense mechanism. Sometimes he'd find himself flirting with a woman, only to then be in the awkward position of having no good reason not to ask her out. His usual solution was to get so piss drunk he either blurted out that he was gay or passed out. There had probably been other resolutions as well, but Henry was too off his tits to remember them. Vomiting had surely gotten him out of at least one awkward situation.

He could get drunk and throw up on Pete, but he was pretty sure the boy would not be deterred. He barely bothered to be polite anymore with his rejection of every offer to "hang out." Nothing fazed Pete; he just kept asking until Henry gave in and let Pete follow him to his favorite pub. Then he started dropping by all the time and acting like it was _his_ pub. Henry's desire to mark his territory and tell Pete to back off was so strong and powerful, it had to be wrong. Henry had realized a long time ago that when he felt that passionate, it was best to pretend he didn't care.

Then Pete went on a date with Henry. He apparently didn't realize it was a date. Charles was clearly not as happy with heterosexuality as he had expected. Henry knew it would be a bad idea to get involved with Charles again, but he was lonely and horny. When Charles dropped by the kiosk and invited him out for a drink, Henry said yes.

Then Pete said he'd go as well. Charles all too eagerly welcomed Pete, while Henry tried to think of subtle sign language to get across the message, "He's not gay, he's just really stupid."

Either Charles failed to receive the messages Henry was sending with his mind, or he was choosing to ignore them. Pete grabbed his faded and thin denim jacket and practically skipped as he walked between the former lovers. Instead of comfortable, relatively string-free sex with an ex, Henry was going to spend the evening protecting Pete's virtue.

xxx

When Pete fell off his stool, Henry took the rest of his lager. The kid was a danger to himself.

Charles kept touching Pete—nothing overtly sexual, just constant encroachments into Pete's personal space. It was strange to watch Charles on the prowl. Henry could remember how handsome and clever he had felt with Charles. Sometimes he thought he missed that view of himself more than the relationship. Seeing Charles oozing his charm all over Pete like a politician was a bit depressing. Maybe Henry had never really been handsome and clever, after all. Maybe he was just easy to manipulate.

Pete eagerly accepted Charles' invitation back to his flat, forcing Henry to go as well.

"It is getting well cold," Pete observed, hugging himself. "Why ain't you got your parka on, Stitch? You wear it all the time when it ain't even that cold."

Henry refused to look at Charles' smug face, so he just stared straight ahead as Pete yapped on about Stitch's "genius" parka. Apparently Pete had spent a lot of time admiring Henry's jacket.

"I think I need to get myself a parka like that," Charles said with an audible smirk. Henry tried to remember what he'd found so appealing about Charles in the first place. He decided he'd give the parka to Pete the next day at work. If Henry swam in it, Pete would look like a toddler in his father's clothes. The mental image was the first thing to make Henry smile all night.

xxx

Charles hated whiskey, but there was a handle of Jack Daniels on his coffee table. Henry smirked at Charles' confidence. Too bad he'd jinxed his easy score by going for the three-way.

Pete was stumbling drunk on the half a pint Henry had allowed him to drink before swiping it away, along with every subsequent drink Charles tried to put in front of the lightweight. Henry was at _least_ two and half sheets to the wind himself, but he felt pretty confident he wasn't going to vomit any time soon, so he'd probably have a little whiskey before he dragged Pete out of the flat.

xxx

Three shots later, Henry was on the familiar tile of Charles' bathroom, praying for death and promising any listening deity that he would never drink again. Only the fact that Pete had cheerfully been describing the night "me'n'Stitch was doin' poppers" forced Henry back to his feet. The kid had no idea what he was saying. If Charles actually pulled out some poppers, or even an overly sugary drink, Pete was going to end up on the receiving end of bumming before he knew what was happening.

As Henry washed his face and rinsed his mouth, he pondered how Charles had turned into a stranger when they'd been together for over a year. There had been a time he'd thought Charles was the one, the person he could sleep next to for the rest of his life. That dream had rather depended on Charles not wanting to fuck girls on the side, but even after the cheating had started, Henry had hung on. It was hard to believe he could have been so wrong.

Henry was feeling contemplative when he dragged himself back into the sitting room and found Charles kissing Pete on the neck. Pete was frozen, his eyes cartoonishly large and full of woe. If asked, Henry couldn't have described the facial expression of someone who realized he had painted himself into a corner and was about to have some seriously unwanted sex, but he recognized the look as soon as he saw it. Charles was completely oblivious to Pete's fear. He was throwing sexy at eyes at Henry like they were about to live out some porno fantasy. Suddenly, it wasn't just the liquor making Henry want to throw up.

"C'mon, Pete," he said, holding a hand out to the younger man. Pete grabbed his hand without hesitation, but once he was on his feet, he looked a bit lost again. Charles tried to intercept them at the door, going on about how he'd missed Henry and how good he was looking. Henry felt too queasy and broken to even talk; he just wanted to be home and waiting for the inevitable hangover.

xxx

Pete rubbed his back as Henry was hit by another wave of dry heaves.

"Do you need to go to hospital?" Pete asked nervously.

"I'll be fine," Henry panted, wiping the tears from his eyes. It was the second time he'd had to stop in an alley. His flat felt miles away.

"I could run to my place, get my scooter..."

"I'm not getting on a fucking scooter," Henry snapped. "I just need a minute."

He felt angry at Pete for seeing him such a mess. He was angry at him for the part Pete had played in stomping all over Henry's memory of what he'd had with Charles.

He was angry at Pete for being so fucking pretty.

He could have turned that anger into a proper rage if Pete hadn't chosen that moment to try and fit his little denim jacket over Henry's shoulders. The denim jacket didn't offer much protection from the chill, but the gesture warmed his heart.

"I'm sorry about Charles," Henry apologized. "He's really confused right now."

Pete looked pretty confused himself, but he didn't ask any questions. He just propped Henry up and helped him back to his flat. Henry decided he would just crawl the two flights up to his place. It was too late to worry about the neighbors talking. He'd gone on a few (dozen) benders after ending things with Charles, and they'd all seen worse. He was mentally preparing himself for the climb when Pete asked, "Should... should I come upstairs?"

Henry was unnecessarily snappish as he told Pete he would be fine on his own. He felt guilty as soon as he hit the stairs. He was going to have to be nicer to Pete now that they were apparently friends.

It wasn't until he managed to crawl into his bed that he wondered just what exactly Pete had been offering outside.


End file.
